17 Days Out: A “Before” Snapshot

So we are 17 days out from the general election. In 2 days early voting will begin in Texas. And the “robo calls” have begun in earnest. You know these calls. The slimy recorded messages that invade your landline in the last weeks before a hotly contested election.

The ones that are factually challenged.

The ones that sway the votes of the fearful and weak-minded whose votes will go to the one that scares them the least. Karl Rove knows all about these people and he is watching them from his place at KarlRove.com. He is keeping track. Here is Karl Rove’s current electoral vote map.

Rove has Obama winning if the election was held today. Winning with 313 electoral votes.

That, by the way is not the way two other electoral vote watching websites have it. At Electoral-Votes.com they have Obama winning 349 electoral votes as of today. Here is their electoral map.

And at Fivethirtyeight.com, Nate Silver has Obama winning with 349.2 votes. This is the first time I have seen those two sites in agreement. Silver’s numbers have been in the 350’s for the past week or so.

So consider this a snapshot of the election before the onslaught of robo calls and the incredible amount of mudslinging that will become this presidential race. It was too much for John Kerry in 2004. Obama’s campaign is fighting back with calls for investigations of White House (that is, government) complicity in Republican voter turnout suppression.

Let’s just see where we are in two weeks.

To be continued . . .